Publicness, Publicity

Abstract “Publicness” has been considered one of the fundamental principles of democratic governance by normative theories of public opinion since the late 18th century. The idea of publicness arose in the context of the interaction of civil society and the state. As an ethical principle referring to discursive visibility, publicness was central to the critical concept of public opinion from its very first conceptualizations. In contemporary democracies, the idea of publicness primarily refers to the public sphere, where the right of “public use of reason” or “public deliberation” of free and equal citizens can—or ought to—take place, and where public opinion is formed and expressed.